Enjoy your Bitcoin while I hodl this Nolan Ryan gold card

These days, you can’t get a Starbucks without someone bringing up their Bitcoin. This and other “cryptocurrencies” are the must-have assets for 2018, and they’re paying big dividends. So why am I not cutting a check right now? Because when you dig a little deeper, you discover crypto’s dirty little secret — the entire market is little more than digital fool’s gold sold to millennial investors who were still in grade school when the dot com bubble burst. That’s why I’ll be happily ignoring this trend and hodling my assets in a 1992 Fleer Ultra Guns of the Game Nolan Ryan gold card.

I know what you’re thinking. No way, you got a Ryan gold card? Lucky! Yes, I am fortunate to have made several smart investments over the years, but my strategy has always been remarkably simple — what utility does this investment provide? With Bitcoin, you have a volatile asset that only retains its value if the market decides it should. With baseball cards, you get year-over-year statistics, a brief bio and sometimes even bubblegum. It doesn’t take Peter Thiel to see the difference.

Of course, diversifying your portfolio is a must for any serious investor. That’s why over the years, I’ve also invested in a ’94 Upper Deck Emmitt Smith hologram card, a signed headshot of Mario Lemieux and sunk my entire allowance into a basketball autographed by Dominique Wilkins and the 1991 Atlanta Hawks. I even own a 20 percent stake in a game-worn Kevin McHale jersey. In the unlikely event the baseball card market tanks, my investments are spread across three other professional sports leagues, so I can rest easy knowing that my family is taken care of. Good luck getting that kind of peace of mind in the crypto market.

Asset security is also a huge issue with cryptocurrencies. Every day you read about a new breach where hackers make off with millions in coins, all untraceable with no FDIC safety net. Meanwhile, my assets are secure in acid-free polypropylene sleeves, inside hard plastic cases, inside a footlocker in my parent’s garage. I even have an added layer of security from when I got mad at my brother in fifth grade and kicked it so the top is bent a little and harder to get off.

So what’s all this worth? Adjusting for inflation, I’d estimate my total assets at like a bajillion US dollars. It’s a solid foundation on which to build my nest egg, and with the recent changes to the inheritance tax, I’ll be able to provide for my children and my children’s children. Plus I’ll have a little something left over to buy myself something nice, like sweet new pegs for my bike or all the Nintendo games in the world.

If you still decide to invest in Bitcoin, I wish you luck. But when you wake up one morning to discover that your digital Monopoly money is worth less than the paper it isn’t printed on, hopefully then you’ll learn the difference between a strategic investment and a glorified Ponzi scheme. It’s a hard lesson, but don’t beat yourself up about it. Seriously, quit hitting yourself. Quit hitting yourself!